♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical Therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- The after stroke, or CVA,
which is Cerebrovascular Accident.
- We're gonna show you walking and balance exercises
you can do at home, very important because falling is,
can be very harmful as we know Brad.
- As well as is returning back to a
normal walking pattern, that you'd like to have,
and this is not just for stroke or CVA,
could be anybody who has a balance issue,
they work for that as well.
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- Oh, the Sleep Ovation mattress.
- Yes, and this is it right here,
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The mattress is a lot bigger than this.
- They're standard sizes.
- Yeah, but it's got seven hundred tiny mattresses,
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to help cool the mattress down a little bit, right?
- Right, yup, very unique.
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and also Facebook.com/BobandBrad.
Yeah pinned on the top of the page.
- I mean it's not a real pin,
it's a picture of a pin.
- That's right.
- So anyways, we'll get to the balance and exercises.
This is something that it costs very little to do it,
I think it's well worth it.
What I did is I went to Menards,
which is a place that sells, big box store.
And I just used little,
these are little wooden white.
- Slats.
- They're made for trim, but it cost me about
four dollars to get an eight feet piece of it,
and I cut 'em into the two feet lengths.
- See it's like that.
What is that like a plastic almost?
- Just a plastic you can make strips of wood.
Then I took some pink tape and put it on there
for visuals, so you have a clear visual of what we have.
And I did make four of 'em, like I said,
about two feet long, twenty inches or so,
it's not that critical.
And I have them down end to end here right now,
so I have a straight line for this is
our first balance and gait exercise.
So, now what you're gonna do is
if you've had a stroke or you're the person that
needs to exercise,
get a gait belt,
and you're gonna need another person.
- Safety first by all means here.
And you wanna make sure that that person
who's with you does have a hand on the gait belt.
Don't just do it.
- Don't practice these by yourself,
because they're gonna challenge your balance.
- That's the idea, exactly.
It can cause you to fall.
- So this first one, we have a straight line,
you could just use a line on the floor,
you don't have to use the little, I call 'em hurdles.
If you're having a problem with one foot crossing
in front or cross in the midline
that's a really big trip hazard.
- Scissoring.
- Big trip hazard.
You're gonna have your cane with you,
because I'm assuming, you may not need it,
but I would you start with a cane for sure.
Your helper is going to get a hold of that belt,
and that gives you a really visual cue,
now if you had a stroke,
you realize that,
you kind of sometimes neglect things but
a bright color can bring that attention and it's gonna help,
and then you're just gonna walk.
- See how that's gonna help you cue into the fact that
you don't wanna cross the leg over.
- Right, and if you cross it, you screwed up the line
so you need to get it back in place and,
and that's what you want to avoid.
Now the thing you can do here,
is once you feel good going straight,
you can always go backwards,
because you can't see what's behind you,
and that forces your proprioception
to go to town and get that working.
Back like that.
Work on the posture, and the person with reminders,
look where you're goin', check your posture out.
So you're working together all the time.
Okay let's go to the second one.
Let go Bob.
- Sorry.
- Now this one,
let's do it this way Bob.
There, can you put that one right there?
- Sure.
- So you just place 'em this way.
There are so many things you can do with such simple tools
like these little hurdles made out of cheap material.
- And if you look right next to it,
this is why you really don't wanna put tape on the floor
'cause that tape never, ever comes up again.
That's what's nice about these,
you don't have to ruin your floor.
And they give you feedback if your feet
don't come up high enough.
If you come like that and you made it move.
- You know exactly that you didn't clear the floor right.
- Exactly.
So we're gonna start here,
and we're gonna walk straight ahead.
- We'll assume I'm holding on to you.
- Right, so you have the person hold on to the gait belt.
And you're gonna come up,
and a lot of times with strokes
you'll get a step two pattern.
- Right.
And you also tend to slide one foot.
- Exactly.
Oftentimes that involved foot.
So this forces you to get up and pay attention to each step.
And this will start out slow,
and as you do it more and more,
I really like this one, it forces a person to do the
proper lift up, no sliding, and get through.
And this one again, if you feel comfortable,
and there is someone holding on to your gait belt
right behind you,
you can go backwards.
Make sure the person is looking.
- It requires a lot of skill to do this.
- Right, that's more advanced.
Really be careful.
Do that one when you're at that level.
This would actually,
I don't know if you've worked with any
of your Parkinson's patients.
- Maybe people with Parkinson's
this is a great tool for them
as they often have that paucity of movement.
- Right.
- And they have trouble lifting their legs like they should.
- Festination?
- Festination, that would be another way to put it.
- Now you keep the sticks the same for the next one,
and instead of going straight forward
you're gonna go sideways.
And this I really like this one a lot.
I've done it with Parkinson's as well as a stroke.
And it's here, and again, someone is definitely
on all these holding you.
- I can see that, this would be a great one for that.
Great visual cues and like you said,
the worse thing that happens is you hit it,
and it's not going to trip you.
It's not gonna cause you to fall.
- But it lets you know you didn't lift it up.
- Right, exactly, it gives you the feedback right away.
- And you'll find, especially with a stroke,
one direction will probably be quite a bit easier
than going the other direction,
depending on which side the CVA involved, right or left.
So you go back and forth.
And on all of these, you're gonna do 'em
probably two or three repetitions at first back and forth,
depending on the level of fatigue.
Be safe with whoever you are working with,
the person that has the stroke.
The next one, it's just amazing what you can do with these.
We're gonna make a,
was that your knee crackin' Bob?
- Yeah, my knee cracks, ever since I was a kid it cracks.
- Oh sure, I'm sure it happens later in life.
Okay, so you make a cross like this,
and you start in one corner and,
again with someone holding on to the belt,
simply forward, to the right, backwards and to here.
And then you can go the other direction.
And this is one of those things that
it's functional because oftentimes you're not
walking straight and right to left.
You walk in different diagonals and everything,
just all mixed up and it's really nice,
especially in the kitchen, to get functional with this.
And you can do the diagonal this way and then back.
And it's different, it really is different,
when you're working with someone you can see
how nice and functional this is.
- It's forcing you into patterns that you normally don't
think about but you do come across in life.
In your garage and you're trying to get around the junk.
- Right, 'cause yeah.
If you get out of the car and you've gotta make your way
through to the door and some things have been dropped
on the floor perhaps.
Now the next one, you make a square.
Just like this.
- I call it a box.
- A box, yes.
- You think out of the box.
- Okay, now you go in the middle with the box.
Bob, sometimes it's nicer to use something taller than
the cane so you're not feeling like you're reaching over.
It can keep you up taller.
And this is five foot, it's our Booyah Stik.
And anything that is solid, it can't slip on the ground,
it has to grip into the ground.
- Say I do like about that, the point you just made.
You can work on posture with that.
It's gonna hold you up into good posture.
- Otherwise you get forward into this.
Okay, now this one is strictly a balance exercise.
We're gonna start here and we're just gonna
touch the toe in front, touch the toe to the right,
and touch the toe to the left.
Now the one going across is by far
the most difficult for most people.
- Right, you may not be able to get to that.
- If you only can get to here,
you go as far as your body allows and keep you safe.
Again, someone will be holding on
to your belt to protect you.
- So do you go back two then or not?
- Pardon?
- Do you step back? - Oh yes I'm sorry, I forgot.
And you do go back.
Now the person initially, you're gonna have 'em watch,
and if they can start doing this fairly easily when
they're visually watch where their foot is,
then you pick a point out in front of 'em,
say, "Look at that point on the wall,"
and do the same thing,
and then you're working their proprioception.
That means they can tell where their foot is in space
without a visual feedback,
which is really important for balance as well as gait,
and keeping upright.
- This is one that, again you can even do with an athlete.
An advanced athlete, and take away the pole.
- Right, you know hold it up like this.
- Have 'em working on it,
if you're working on a knee that's rehabbing.
- And then they may reach way out to the side like that.
- You could make the square larger.
- With a stroke that's probably not gonna happen.
- So a lot of different uses of this Brad,
this is a clever idea.
- Yeah, it's just handy dandy.
So very good.
- All right.
Thanks for watching.
- Take care.